Vanish
Puzzles

by
Gianni A. Sarcone and Marie-Jo Waeber

"Small
streams make great rivers, and viceversa"

-
G. S.

Geometric
erodings

Cutting
and rearranging parts of an image can produce the illusion
that a part of it magically disappeared. Actually, early
counterfeiting experts used this simple system of skillfully
cutting a number of individual notes (say, 9 notes) in order
to eventually end up with enough pieces to form a 10th note,
as shown in the diagram below.

Vanish
puzzles (we've renamed them 'stereophanic puzzles')
exist for 5 centuries... but they still continue to amaze
puzzle fans! These kind of paradoxical puzzles involve the
rearranging of parts of a drawing, so that, once the rearrangement
is completed, a portion of the drawing disappears or reappears
when the pieces are put back into their original order. One
of the most famous vanish puzzle was Sam Loyd's "Get
Off the Earth" puzzle made in 1896. Another early example
is the vanishing
Leprechaun.

We
hope you'll enjoy some variant and novel vanishing puzzles
featured in this and the next pages!

The Japanese
BirdsPrint
this page. Then, cut out the 3 pieces A, B, C below
and lay them out in order to make one extra bird appear...